Art and Anti-Art: Maurizio Cattelan Flips the Bird

This fall, Maurizio Cattelan will take New York, and probably America, by storm when his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum opens in early November.

If you aren't yet familiar with the artist, whose work includes "The Ninth Hour", a life-like sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, among other satiric, comic and bizarre manifestations of Cattelan's provocative,  renegade sensibility, you will soon.

Below, a teaser: "The Ballad of Trotsky" a sculpture by the artist. He also created a monumental sculpture of a hand "flipping the bird" positioned at the Italian Stock Market. Madonn'....

The Ballad of Trotsky by Maurizio Cattelan

"Il Dito Medio"(Middle Finger) -- (or is it a vandalized black shirt salute?)

at the Milan Stock Exchange by Maurizio Cattelan

NY Times T Magazine interview here

The Guardian Interview here

Save the St Marks Bookshop - Please Sign the Petition

The St. Mark's Bookshop is a NYC literary treasure. The St. Mark's Bookshop has a long tradition in the Lower East Side and serves an admirable and increasingly rare function. St. Mark's is struggling to pay the market rent that Cooper Union is charging them at 31 3rd Ave.   A significant rent concession by Cooper Union could save this irreplaceable neighborhood institution.

So I signed a petition to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science, which says:

"The St. Mark's Bookshop, a vital Lower East Side cultural institution, needs a rent low enough to survive. Join the Cooper Square Committee petitioning Cooper Union, the bookstore's landlord, to give St. Mark's Bookshop a lower rent."

Will you sign this petition? Click here:

http://signon.org/sign/save-the-st-marks-bookshop?source=s.em.cp&r_by=642007

Thank you

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Political endgames: Could terror be "institutionalized" in a Democracy?

Paul Krugman draws criticism from the Left and Right on his observations about the politics of 9/11 here

The criticism on Krugman’s observations on the "Political rituals of 9/11" here

DITHOB: And, while the Krugman blog post sparked controversy, would it ever be time for the larger meaning of 9/11 and the endless war with terror that we face to enter the public consciousness ? Surely, the numbers killed in 9/11 stagger. But suppose, G-d forbid, just suppose despite (or because of) TSA, surveillance, Guantanamo, Bin Laden assassination, waterboarding, etc., 9/11 or worse recurs. Will the wrenching emotions of 9/11 and public ceremonies also recur, or a numbness. Will there be a call for another memorial? Or numbness. To that end, the late, brilliant author David Foster Wallace observes in his “Just Asking” short essay from the Atlantic whether, just as we accept thousands of automobile fatalities a year as the cost for America’s freedom to travel, could we accept a large number of deaths from terror as the price of living in a democracy beset by anarchic religious terrorists?  David Foster Wallace – Just Asking - here 

A dark but provocative question-- one that hopefully America will not have to engage.... 

Disconnects and Disturbances in the Field

Number of Americans living in poverty hits record numbers link here

Demand for Taget Missoni line crashes retailer's website link here

Food pantry coordinator loses job, slips below poverty line link here

Zizek on the political and social impotence of the smash and grab quality of the UK Riots "Shoplifters of the World Unite" link here

On (or rather against) Zizek's Comments and the UK Riots link here

Turner Congressional Win: A new political dynamic in Brooklyn and Queens politics link here

Over objections, new Brooklyn Historic Landmark district is established link here

Monday Morning Melody: "I'm a Fool, Heaven Knows..": Fool's Gold by Graham Parker and the Rumour

Graham Parker and the Rumour, BBC Live  Broadcast by the BBC on 17 March 1977, this captures Graham Parker and the Rumour just as they were breaking their 'Heat Treatment' album, Brinsley Schwartz and Martin Belmont on guitars and Bob Andrews on keyboards.

"It Changed Everything": And, True, We Will Never Get Over it

Peggy Noonan gets to the heart of the matter in her Wall Street Journal article yesterday:

"And it changed everything. It marked a psychic shift in our town between "safe" and "not safe." It marked the end of impregnable America and began an age of vulnerability. It marked the end of "we are protected" and the beginning of something else."

DITHOb: Ms. Noonan has penned a beautiful, heartbreaking remembrance about 9/11, about heroes, survival, and sacrifice in this beautiful City. Maybe "The" article of the 10th anniversary. G-d bless us all whether we confront, or turnaway, from this painful and staggering memory.
As Ms. Noonan writes, we will never get over it, nor should we. Like Pearl Harbor, for the New Yorkers especially those who lived in the City at the time,  it will always remain indelibly etched in the memory.

For subsequent generations it may become History (or Herstory) but for those of us alive, aware, and especially for those of us with significant others and children to worry about, 9/11 will always remain the recent past, maybe even the Here and Now.

Peggy Noonan's full WSJ article here

--Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Are Those Military Jets Flying Shotgun Over New York City?

High flying aircraft all day that do not sound like commercial aircraft...

The Most Disturbing Reporting About 9/11

Iraq, Afghanistan, Ghost Wars, CIA, 43, WTC.....

CODA: The Submission by Amy Waldman: 9/11 Through a Looking Glass

I saw Amy Waldman interviewed on a news program and thought, The Submission just might be the "9/11 book" that I am ready for. Having backed into previous 9/11 novels, such as Netherlands, or taken it on headlong in the non-fiction Looming Towers, I had started thinking about what September 11, 2011, ten years after, might actually mean, amazed at how much time has seemed to pass so quickly in this decade: our children becoming teenagers and young adults, the loss of family members, life, NYC, history and the collision of change, hope, and dreams, American and otherwise. 

The Submission is, on the surface, a traditional literary work, but it is subtle and quietly subversive in its analysis of politics, journalism --  tabloid and otherwise, and daily life in contemporary New York at all economic and social strata. It addresses identity politics, more specifically, what it means/meant to be Muslim in America, post 9/11, in the context of the selection of a design for the memorial for victims of a WTC-type terror attack. In doing so, to this reader, it suggests that while there are never precisely any exact winners or losers in this conflict, it is this endless struggle and opportunity, both to identify who we are and to resist being culturally straight-jacketed by others, that seems to identify what it is to be "Americans."

After I finished reading the book, I discovered the accompanying official website which was especially resonant and provocative in offering some of the ideas and sources that inspired and informed the author's writing of this very thoughtful, troubling and satisfying work. 

-Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

=========================================================

As the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2011 approaches, I started reading The Submission, a novel by Amy Waldman, which deals with the politics and cultural dislocations swirling around the construction of a memorial for a terrorist attack in New York City.

Since Gilbert Gottfried told his joke at the celebrity roast in October 2001, the creative impulse in us has been struggling to escape and to figure out just what contribution can be made to our understanding of what happened and what it all means, if in fact there are any answers to be had.

What I find fascinating about Ms. Waldman's beautifully written, literate work, at once funny, serious and dark, is that, since this is not truly historical fiction -- clearly, we are, even after a decade, still painfully close to the Reality of the Actual Event --  the book takes place in a sort of Alternate Universe. It is a World Trade Center, in a NYC, on a 9/11 , attacked by terrorists, and a memorial is built by a Committee to remember the event. But at the same time it is something else, it is not a roman a clef of our actual experience, and I find that slight dissonance, or rather incongruity, powerful and adding to the insightfulness of the book. While I am still reading The Submission, the experience feels as though the author, Amy Waldman, has swung for the fences with this not overly long book, and beyond hitting a home run, is achieving something like escape velocity.

I am still reading it, struggling, frankly, to read it slowly, savoring it, so I don't finish it until just before Sunday, 9/11.  Highly recommended.

Friday Morning Melody: Graham Parker - "I Dreamed Headlong Collisions/In Jetlag Panavision"

Graham Parker and the Rumour, "Discovering Japan" from Squeezing Out Sparks, Arista 1979

The Andy Monument: Union Square

Rob Pruitt’s “The Andy Monument” / March – October2, 2011
Photo by Tony Napoli - Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Inspired by Warhol’s art and life, Rob Pruitt (b. 1964, Washington DC) created “The Andy Monument” as a tribute to the late artist. It stands on the street corner, just as Warhol did when he signed and gave away copies of ‘Interview’ magazine. Pruitt’s sculpture adapts and transforms the familiar tradition of classical statuary.

Other posts concerning Mr. Warhol that reflect DITHOB's ongoing interest and respect for his creativity and "merz"-sensibility here, here and here ..

Down to the Wire: Passione: John Tuturro's Musical Adventure of Napoletano Song

John Tuturro's "Passione: A Musical Adventure" which explores contemporary and traditional music in Napoli, aka Naples, formerly know as Neopolis, and before that, Parthenope, plays through this evening at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema and Brooklyn Academy of Music.

While it has drawn comparisons to "Buena Vista Social Club" the film draws on the cultural complexity and ethnic diversity of this southern Italian city, one of the oldest, continually inhabited cities in the world. Billboard reports that a concert tour of performers appearing in the film is scheduled in Italy, and plans are underway for bringing the musicians and singers to the US.

As a thoroughly assimilated American/New Yorker whose ancestors hail from Napoli and Bari, it is fascinating to explore the contemporary iterations of the traditional roots of this music that was so familiar to me growing up in an Italian-American household in Brooklyn. Yet, when we visited  a couple of years ago, at the time my oldest daughter developed genuine fluency after spending a year at the University of Urbino, Napoli (which is my surname) seemed such a foreign country to me.  Rome seemed more familiar, more comfortable, reflecting dreams and aspirations. It occurred to me that Rome reflects the more polished, urbane and high culture aspects of New York, and Napoli, the more struggling, and striving, aspects of  New York, a collision of high and low cultures,  emananting from a complex, diverse mix of individuals of all walks of life, ethnicities, races and cultures. Rome is, of course, unique like no other city, but with aspects of Manhattan's Fifth Ave, Madison and Park Avenues. Napoli is, of course, likewise a uniquely historical city, but with aspects of Canal Street, the Lower East Side, Williamsburgh and Bed Stuy. Wonderful, too, that Mr. Tuturro, whose roots are in Sicily and Puglia (Bari), created this film that opens another door to the truth and the romance of Napoletan culture.

Catch it if you can.


Passione (directed by  John Turturro)-"Tammuriata nera" - Peppe Barra, Max Casella, M'BarkaBen Taleb.

Wednesday Morning Ramones: "I Wanna Live"

I Wanna Live

I've been thinking it over

And I know just what to do
I've been thinking it over
And I know I just can't trust myself

I'm a Gypsy prince
Covered with diamonds and jewels
But then my lover exposes me
I know I'm just a damn fool

[CHORUS]

I give what I've got to give
I give what I need to live
I give what I've got to give
It's important if I wanna live

I wanna live
I want to live my life
I wanna live
I want to live my life

As I load my pistol
Of fine German steel
I never thought I'd be so down and out
Having my last meal
But I know I can do it
It just took a few years
As I execute my killer
The morning is near
 (Dee Dee Ramone, Daniel Rey)

Going Fast: "Ostalgia" at the New Museum

"Ostalgia," the exhibition at the New Museum closing on September  25, takes its title from the German word ostalgie, a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Twenty years ago—after the fall of the Berlin Wall—a process of dissolution led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and many other countries that had been united under Communist governments. From the Baltic republics to the Balkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia, entire regions and nations were reconfigured, their constitutions rewritten, their borders redrawn. “Ostalgia” looks at the art produced in and about some of these countries, many of which did not formally exist two decades ago. Mixing private confessions and collective traumas, the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies must negotiate new relationships to history, geography, and ideology.


"Ostalgia” brings together the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Many of the works offer a series of reportages on aspects of life and art under Communism and in the new post-Soviet countries. "The exhibition pays particular attention to the unique place that artists came to occupy in Socialist countries, acting simultaneously as outcasts, visionaries, and witnesses.

"Unlike a conventional geographical survey, the exhibition includes works produced by Western European artists who have grappled with the reality and the myth of the East. Some of the preoccupations that unite the artists in “Ostalgia” are a romantic belief in the power of art as a transformative, almost curative agent; an obsession with language; the conception of a new aesthetic of the body; a fascination with the ruins of history as represented by monuments and architectural vestiges; and an understanding of artwork as a form of sentimental documentary that mediates between cultural pressures and individual anxieties."
 
DITHOB: The show alternates between a very useful pedagogy, outlining the rise and fall of Soviet socialist soceity and culture, to Phil Collins' film that views the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union on educated East German  women who had functional roles in the apparatus of the State and who then had to re-orient themselves in the new capitalist society. Art, sculpture, ephemera, that help to explore the cultural transitions in Eastern Europe.
 
THrough September 25. More here

Flatbush Aftermath: Trees Fall

Lots of trees down in the Fiske Terrace - Midwood Park sections of Flatbush. On East 18th two trees fell, one on a car. (Word on the street was that the car was a rental, fortunately, no one was hurt (there was a baby seat in the back), and the rental company told them the car would probably be safer with them.) Another tree blocking East 17th street; a resident in a nearby home said no one heard the fall.

photos by Tony Napoli - Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn